Free Notes

The main collection with hand-selected songs.

Collections

It is possible in free-notes.net to switch between different collections. If you use "Practise!" or "All pieces", you see only the pieces of the currently selected collection.
As long as you do not select a collection, you get the preselected first collection ("the main collection ...,", see below).

It contains very different things: songs, dances, blues, classical pieces, also some exercises.

Babioles(50)The Babioles are 6 suites of dances by Jean Christophe Naudot (~1690 - Nov-26-1762). They are mostly not very difficult and have 2 voices with a moderate note range.

A collection of Landlers(50)The Landler (or Ländler) is a kind of song resp. dance all around the Alpes. Here I have collected a series of dances. I find them rather funny, and what is more: if you want to practise arpeggios (which means broken chords) the Landler is very helpful. Many of them have 2 voices.

Gavots collection(72)A collection of gavots. The gavot is an old dance which was popular in the european baroque time. It is still popular in French folk music. I hope, I do not have too many errors concerning French diacritics.

Zwiefache(37)The "Zwiefache" are a real challenge, if you have, like me, problems with rhythm changes. I really don't understand, how people can dance on these these complicated rhythms.

Fiddler's Tunebook(195)A collection of English dances and songs as found on the page of Chris Partington. Chris has transcribed a huge number of pieces into the digital notation format ABC. I like the pieces very much. But sometimes they are hard to understand (especially concerning the repetitions). And often you have to make up the end for yourself.

French pieces(434)A collection of French pieces from the page of Sylvain Piron. Some of the pieces had a strange ending. I changed them rather freely. I also think, that most of the pieces have to be played rather fast.

Schleunige(52)The Schleunige is a kind of Landler. It is not so funny, rather a bit strange. But it is also very good for practising broken chords. We have also many pieces in 2 voices here.

Boismortier Opus 27(6)(under construction:) 6 nice suites of dances and 2 sonates of Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1691 - 1765). They have 2 voices, the second voice being a bit more easy. The first voice has normally a bigger note range and is more challenging. If you like the Babioles you can continue practising with the difficulty moderately increased.Many thanks to Ute Vollmöller for transforming the original score to a digital format.

The most frequent problem is the length of measures. When you have a repetition, the upbeat plus the repeated part
of the last measure should rather have a complete measure length. If this is not the case, you have a break in rhythm.
It seems, as if formerly this was seen rather relaxed. I have tried to fix this with only minor changes.

Another problem are the accidentials in the measures. Unfortunately I do not know, how long they were
regarded as valid. Sometimes I have the impression, they should be valid only for this note, and sometimes, as if
they should be valid, until there is a contradicting accidential. I have adapted it to today's convention, that
they are valid for the measure in which they occur. And here I have sometimes decided according to my personal taste.

Sometimes I have changed the key without changing the notes.

In very rare cases I also have changed a note, when the note range would have been too big.

What did I not change?

The biggest remaining problem is the following:
There are several pieces with two repetitions following each other.
And here the second repetition has an upbeat different than the upbeat of the first.
Normally this is not possible. But as it is so in the original and I do not know a clean
solution, I left it as it was. I imagine both parts as somehow separate, with a kind of break between them.
At least I added a markup (like 'P:2') at these spots.

There are also some pieces, that I did not understand at all. They are unchanged.

For Specialists:

If you find an error, please send me a mail. You have probably already noticed, that I could need some help.